Renewal
by evieeden
Summary: Imprinting changes everything for two best friends. Advent story written for 11th December.


**Happy 11 December everyone. I hope you enjoy today's advent story offering although it is the beginning of what I have named my 'Quartet of Pain' – stories that start out happy and then kind of don't finish that way. Anyway, I hope that doesn't put you off and that you keep reading **

**Lots of thanks and love go to the incomparable idealskeptic. And as always, I don't own anything to do with Twilight.**

**Renewal**

Bella found him sitting on the withered limbs of the old, bleached-out tree on the beach. It was their spot – were they had come to talk, to complain, to face the truth about the Quileute legends. It made sense that he would retreat here to think.

She crossed the beach slowly, her arms wrapped tightly around her as the cold wind whipped around her, piercing through her coat and chilling her bones. Finally reaching him, she saw that he was similarly hunched over, head hanging in despair.

"Hi Jake," she greeted him softly.

He glanced up at her before returning his gaze to his feet. It wasn't a welcome exactly, but then he wasn't telling her to get lost either, so she took it as permission to stay.

Picking carefully around the tangle of branches and his long legs, she finally settled herself in the hollow of the fallen tree, away from the driving wind that tore up the beach.

Wordlessly, he lowered himself onto the ground next to her, his supernatural warmth leeching the rest of the air's chill from her body. Pushing her hair away from her face, she shuffled closer, leaning her head against his shoulder.

In moments like this they could almost pretend that they were still the same – still Jake and Bells just hanging out, arguing about who was more mature, completely oblivious to the supernatural world that surrounded them.

It was almost the same.

It was completely different.

Bella wasn't sure how much time had passed before he spoke, but it was long enough that the damp from the ground was beginning to seep through her jeans. She ignored it. This wasn't about her comfort; this was about Jake and what he was going through right now.

"How did you know where I was? Did Paul tell you?"

"No," she replied. "No-one told me. I just knew." She raised her head and looked around the confined place, shielded from the beach beyond. "This was where I came too, when I first..." Her voice trailed off.

He snorted.

"Looks like I picked the wrong place to hide, then," he said, a trace of bitterness in his voice. "I should've chosen a better hiding place."

She looked at him, his profile set sternly against the dimming light.

"Is that what you're doing here?" she asked. "Hiding?"

He sighed heavily and ran his hands tiredly over his face. "I don't know what I'm doing."

Bella leaned against him once more, and this time he wrapped the arm closest to her around her shoulders, pulling her into his side. She curled into his body, sliding her arms around his waist and hugging him tightly.

It felt like they were in our own little bubble here, secreted away from the rest of the world.

It couldn't last.

"How did it get like this, Bella?" he asked.

She didn't know what to say so she just shrugged.

He sighed heavily.

"I had it all worked out, you know," he told her. "When I first phased and they told me all about what it meant to be a wolf – the fighting, the anger, the shared mind, the imprinting..."

Ah yes, the imprinting. That was what it all came down to in the end.

That was why her best friend, the strongest man she knew, was currently huddled in this hollow with her, instead of out there with the rest of the pack at Sam and Emily's house.

Bella had been the first to fall.

She had stormed down to La Push just a year ago, prepared to confront Jake on why he was avoiding her. Sure, he had told her that he wasn't any good for her anymore, that she wasn't good for him, but the look in his eyes had convinced him that he didn't mean a word he was saying.

He had looked so vulnerable, so traumatized, that Bella couldn't help but think that there was more at play than she was being told. So she had worked herself up, gotten mad - so mad that she felt like she could take on Sam and all of his gang - and she had gone to that little, red house determined to fight for Jake with everything she had.

She had ended up fighting too, but not with Sam.

Her best friend was asleep, but she had spotted his tormentors through the window, approaching the house. Filled with rage and sorrow, she had flown across the yard, shoving hard into Sam's chest. When one of the other boys, Paul, she now knew, had started yelling in her face, she had been infuriated, and that anger had grown when he had laughed at her fear for her friend.

She had slapped him, the first time she had ever hit anyone in her life.

He had imprinted.

She and Paul had experienced a turbulent relationship at first – neither of them had a particularly good first impression of each other – but eventually they had begun a tentative relationship, feelings had developed and they had finally moved in together six months later.

She was happy with Paul. It hadn't been ideal at first, but their relationship was stronger than ever now.

The worst part of the whole imprinting drama was Jake.

The look on his face when he had run to Bella's rescue, only to find that his pack mate had imprinted her had been devastating.

Bella had known before that Jacob had feelings for her – he had told her as much when they were sat in the theatre lobby waiting for Mike to finish vomiting – but she hadn't realised until that moment just how much she had loved him back. It wasn't passionate, romantic love, not yet, but it had the makings of something strong, something real.

Until it was all taken away. There was no coming back after that.

Jake had graciously stepped aside and bowed to the all encompassing power of the imprint. He had promised Bella that they would always be best friends, and then sent her to Paul with a smile on his face.

She had gone reluctantly, but he had been firm. Imprinting was for a purpose. It was decreed by the gods. He figured there had to be a good reason why Bella had been chosen for Paul and he didn't want to see his brother suffer for the sake of his own happiness.

In a way it had been better.

Sure, he had been upset at first, but the nature of the imprint had reset his feelings for Bella, deepened their friendship and taken away any romantic element that there had once been between them.

Bella knew that he was truly happy for the both of them now, but at the same time his resistance to imprinting itself had grown. Sure, Jake wanted a family and a relationship one day, but the possibilities of what could've been without imprinting still haunted him.

Jacob promised himself that when he fell in love again it would be because he wanted to, because he chose to, not because the gods had decreed it.

Then he fell.

Lucy Fuller had been away at college for the last four years and had returned home to find that her fourteen-year-old brother had grown up while she had been away. Brady may have been younger than her, but he now looked and acted much older, and was running around the reservation with a gang of other older boys, missing school and ignoring curfews.

Demanding to know what was going on with her brother, Lucy had followed him down to Sam's and the barbecue this evening.

Jake had taken one look at the angry girl and imprinted on her.

Everyone had seen it happen; everyone had recognised it.

No-one was expected Jake to run, but run he had.

Terrified of this strange girl who made him feel...everything... he ran all the way down to the beach and to the weathered old tree, and now Bella had come to find him.

Because she knew what it felt like. Because she understood.

And because she was still his best friend no matter what and if she could be there for him like he had been there for her, then she would chase him down to the ends of the earth.

"What are you going to do?" Bella eventually asked Jake.

He rested his head against hers.

"I don't know. I guess at some point I have to go back... explain..."

She reached up and patted him on the shoulder. "I don't think you have to worry about that. When I left, Brady had already let her know about the whole wolf thing."

"Think he'll save me the trouble and tell her about imprinting too?" He laughed ruefully.

Bella smiled. "No, I think you've got that joy all to yourself."

"Great."

An idiot couldn't have failed to notice the sarcasm.

"Well, you never know," she tried to sound bright and positive, "Maybe she'll take it well."

Jake drew back and looked at her head. "Did she look like she was taking it well when you left?"

Bella winced and avoided looking at him in the eye.

"Well, you couldn't really tell," she prevaricated. "She was kind of yelling a lot at Brady when I left about how he better have a good excuse for turning into a 'giant dog'." She finally raised her gaze to his. "I thought it was probably a good time to get out of there for the explanation about the Cold Ones."

Jake pulled a sympathetic face at that, but he didn't argue with her.

Whenever the subject of why the wolves phased for the first time came up, it always ended up raising the ghost of Bella's long-dead relationship with the Cullens, and she kept hoping that at some point that part of her life would stay forgotten. She wasn't ashamed of it – she had loved the family of vampires and she wasn't going to apologise for that – but it upset Paul to hear about it and, to some extent, it still upset her too.

Jake sighed. "I suppose I'm going to have to tell her then."

She rubbed his arm in comfort. "Sooner is probably better," she recommended. "She'll probably sense that something's not right, and the longer you leave it, the harder it'll get."

He sighed again. "Do you ever wonder what might have been?"

She tilted her head curiously. "What do you mean?"

"I mean if imprinting never existed," he explained. "If I had been just a boy and you had been just a girl, do you ever think about what might have happened?"

He didn't mean it. She knew that he didn't mean it, not really. He was just railing against the imprinting, even as his feelings for Lucy became sharper, more defined.

She wouldn't deny him his answers though.

"Yes, I wonder sometimes," she admitted. "I love Paul. I really can't imagine not being with him now, but sometimes I do wonder if we would have ever gotten together without the imprinting."

"And what did you work out?" Jake asked.

"I think we would've been sweethearts," she said honestly. "I think we would've loved each other dearly, but I don't know if it would have ever come to more than that as we grew up. I would like to think that given time, we would have stayed together, married, had children..." She smiled and shrugged. "I don't know."

"I used to dream about us getting married," Jake divulge. "Well, that and other stuff."

He waggled his eyebrows at her and she shrieked with laughter and smacked him on the arm.

"But I don't know," he continued. "I've seen your relationship with Paul inside his head, and I don't think we would have been like that together." It was hard for him to admit but he finally confessed. "I don't know, looking back, if we had completely unrealistic expectations of each other. Paul's been good for you."

She hugged him close to her again. "Thank you. That means a lot for you to say that."

"Maybe that's what Lucy will be for me," he admitted. "My Paul." He groaned and smacked his forehead with his palm. "Shit! Don't ever tell him I said that. I'll never live it down."

Bella couldn't stop her giggles. "If you want I'll lend him out to you anytime you need a hug."

He pushed her lightly in protest, but he was grinning easily now.

"Don't you dare, Bella Swan!"

Still smiling, he clapped his hands against his legs and then heaved himself upwards. Reaching out a hand to Bella, he pulled her up after him. Brushing the sand off her legs, she followed him back out onto the main stretch of the beach.

Arm in arm, they meandered slowly back in the direction of the trail that would lead them to Sam's place.

"I'm surprised Paul hasn't come looking for you already," he commented.

She looked up at him. "I told him not to. I wanted to talk to you by myself first and he understood."

Jake nodded. "I'm glad you came, Bells."

Her mouth curved upwards. "Love you, Jake," she announced.

"Love you too," he replied.

They were almost at Sam and Emily's now and she could make out the sound of voices talking, Lucy's included. No-one was shouting anymore so she presumed that the other girl had calmed down now and was finding out more about the pack's situation.

"She'll love you too," she promised Jake. It suddenly felt important that he should know that, before he walked out there to face his new imprint.

He cast a sardonic glance her way. "And how do you know that?" he asked.

She turned to face him.

"Because you're _you_ and I don't think it's possible to not love you" she stated plainly. "You're a good man, Jake. She'll be lucky to have you."

He studied her face for a moment before drawing her into a deep hug.

"I'm still your best friend, Bells. No matter what."

"And you're mine." She hugged him back and then pushed him away. "Now go get her before I start crying over how sappy I'm being."

She rolled her eyes at herself and he laughed. Placing a fond kiss on her forehead he bounded off to be greeted by catcalls from the rest of the pack.

Despite his fears, Lucy turned to him with a smile and Bella saw the answering grin cross his face as he strode over to officially meet her.

They would be happy together; she could see it in both their faces.

And she was glad beyond doubt because Jake deserved it.

Paul crept up behind her and snuck his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her head.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

She turned to smile up at him and gave him a soft kiss.

"I'm perfect," she told him.

And she was.


End file.
